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This paper examines how economic and sociological globalization influence the cross-country diffusion of the most widely adopted non-governmental environmental regime, ISO 14001. This regime encourages firms to adopt progressive environmental programs which are beyond the legal requirement. We present a panel analysis of ISO 14001 adoption across 106 countries over seven years. For economic globalization, we find that trade flows supports diffusion. Sociological globalization supports ISO 14001 though transnational governmental and non-governmental networks and several cultural networks. Spread of ISO 14001 is also facilitated with higher embeddedness in the Internet network. In sum, globalization seems to be positive influence on the cross-country diffusion of a beyond compliance environmental regimes. In sum to better understand the virtues and limitation of globalization, scholars should focus on specific sub-components of economic and sociological globalization and how they influence any policy relevant phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary environmental programs are codes of progressive environmental conduct that firms pledge to adopt. This paper investigates whether ISO 14001, a voluntary program with a weak sword ? a weak monitoring and sanctioning mechanism, can mitigate shirking and improve participants? environmental performance. Our analysis of over 3,000 facilities regulated as major sources under the U.S. Clean Air Act suggests that ISO 14001 certified facilities reduce their pollution emissions more than non-certified facilities. This result persists even after controlling for facilities? emission and regulatory compliance histories as well as addressing potential endogeneity issues between facilities? environmental performance and their decisions to join ISO 14001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent discussions on globalization have revived debates about whether countries’ regulatory policies converge to a global standard. Convergence advocates point to the structural pressures of the global economy, the spread of common norms, and the increasing role of international institutions, while the divergence school points to the embeddedness of domestic regulatory institutions and varying domestic political economies. Do various types of globalization lead to convergence in national level responses to non-governmental regimes? This paper will examine cross-national adoption patterns of ISO 14001, perhaps the most important contemporary international non-governmental environmental regime. ISO 14001 offers a process-based system of voluntary regulation instead of an outcome-based system of public regulation that many firms find cumbersome. Thus, it is expected that firms across countries would embrace this regime. This has not consistently been the case. Using a simple measure, the standard deviation divided by the mean of country level ISO 14001 certifications, cross-national divergence has increased from 2.57 in 1997 to 2.63 in 1998, 2.71 in 1999, and 2.91 in 2000. ISO 14001 was launched in 1996. We will investigate ISO 14001 adoption rates for over 80 countries from 1997-2002. We will examine whether and how various types of globalization pressures -- economic, sociological and institutional -- influence country-level ISO 14001 adoption rates. We will use a host of controls to capture the influence of domestic political economy variables. Our cross sectional, time series analysis will make important theoretical and empirical contribution to IPE/CPE literatures by carefully operationalizing various types of globalization and testing how they influence the adoption of perhaps the most important non-governmental environmental regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary programs are an important development in the environmental governance arena. Such programs promise a virtual panacea for governments by lowering the costs of monitoring and enforcing environmental regulations. Arguably, to achieve their wide-spread adoption, governments need to provide incentives for joining voluntary programs, such as environmental audit laws that require regulators to be lenient with firms’ self-disclosed regulatory violations. However, skeptics argue that because profit-seeking firms may tend to skirt costly regulations, only strictly monitored and enforced regulations can compel compliance. Further, firms may interpret environmental audit laws enacted to encourage self-policing as licenses to pollute and end up hurting the environment. ISO 14001 is a non-governmental code that requires firms to establish environmental management systems and have them audited by external auditors. Its adoption rates have varied across U.S. states. We expect ISO 14001 certified facilities should have lower pollution emissions than non-certified facilities, and versus their pre-certification levels. Moreover, certified facilities’ performance improvements should be even more pronounced where governments have enacted environmental audit laws that provide confidence to firms to invite external auditors to assess their environmental management systems. One criteria for evaluation voluntary programs such as ISO 14001 is pollution reduction. Our paper contributes to the literature on voluntary self-policing programs by examining how ISO 14001 (a key self-policing program) influences firms’ environmental performance. Building on our previous work, the research design for this paper centers on a panel of study of several thousand large facilities in the US. The analyses will compare the environmental performance (as reflected in TRI emissions) comparing facilities that have received ISO 14001 certification with those that have not, and comparing of ISO 14001 certified facilities’ emissions pre and post certification. Given the conflictual climate of environmental governance in many jurisdictions, an emphasis on voluntary programs raises important issues about the prospects for their efficacy. Our research should inform both academic and public dialogues about whether and when voluntary programs and public policy can improve firms’ environmental performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ISO 14001 is an international voluntary environmental code sponsored by the International Organization for Standardization. Firms that join ISO 14001 establish internal management systems that govern the environmental components of their operations. The objective of ISO 14001 is to ensure firms comply with government environmental regulations while encouraging them to go beyond the law's requirements. Although widely touted as beneficial to regulators, firms, and consumers, ISO 14001 adoption rates have varied across countries. This paper examines how country-level factors in firms' political and economic contexts influence firms' incentives to join ISO 14001. Analyses of ISO 14001 adoption rates across 67 countries indicate that firms are more likely to join ISO 14001 when governments flexibly enforce environmental regulations with a less adversarial and litigious stance towards firms, and when consumers want mechanisms for identifying environmentally progressive firms. In appropriate contexts, ISO 14001 provides an important information benefit for firms, regulators and consumers, one that helps each group solve transaction cost problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]